Moffat County author signing books in Craig

A Dinosaur National Monument Park Ranger will be in Craig at the end of the week with her full supply of books. “Hyphanden’s Box,” which came out at the beginning of the month, is the third book in Krisko’s “Stolen” trilogy, based in a fantasy world about a changeling that is kidnapped and political intrigue and action ensue. The trilogy originally started out as a short story, but Krisko realized there was much more to the story she wanted to tell.

A Dinosaur National Monument Park Ranger will be in Craig at the end of the week with her full supply of books.

Kathy Krisko, a park ranger who works across Colorado but primarily at Dinosaur the past several years, will take part in the Do It Downtown Thursdays that have brought artists, performers and businesses together in downtown Craig.

Krisko will be offering her full catalogue of work — six books and a host of short stories — for sale and doing a book signing at Downtown Books Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m.

Krisko has done a signing at Downtown Books before, but she’ll be back this time with two recently printed books — one the conclusion to a trilogy, the other the beginning of a new story.

“Hyphanden’s Box,” which came out at the beginning of the month, is the third book in Krisko’s “Stolen” trilogy, based in a fantasy world about a changeling that is kidnapped and political intrigue and action ensue. The trilogy originally started out as a short story, but Krisko realized there was much more to the story she wanted to tell.

“After writing it, I found out it was more than a short story,” she said. “So basically that short story is the first chapter of ‘Stolen.’”

Krisko also had “Cornerstone” go to print in May of this year, the first book in a series. It focuses on a cornerstone that has a mind of its own, and eventually works its way to becoming a castle, but may have devious motives. She calls it a “character study in how people see themselves if they know they are thought of us bad or evil.”

Aspiring writers are often told to “write what they know,” and that is largely how Krisko started out, doing nonfiction short stories, some about law enforcement or park rangers. But transitioning to fiction has been all creation from her imagination, she said.

“What I do for work and these books are pretty separate,” she said. “I could have written these without having this exact job. Who knows where the ideas came from, it’s probably from the stuff my mom read me as a kid.”

Krisko calls here work epic or medieval fantasy and said it has been compared to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Her work has never hit it big nationally, but that has never been an issue since she began writing in 2005.

“I’ve been able to create whatever I wanted,” she said. “I’ve always been attracted to the fantasy genre and I’ve never felt forced to write or create. It’s always been stuff that comes naturally.”